


The Girl Who Can't Break Up, The Boy Who Can't Leave

by Ammar



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Forum: Goldenlake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 08:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11032563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ammar/pseuds/Ammar
Summary: She’s the girl who can’t break up, and he’s the boy who can’t leave; like the planets in their stately dance about the night sky, they wander occasionally into close proximity, drawn together, really, as if by the movements of a great hand, but then inevitably drift apart again. (Alex and Delia.)





	The Girl Who Can't Break Up, The Boy Who Can't Leave

She’s the girl who can’t break up, and he’s the boy who can’t leave; like the planets in their stately dance about the night sky, they wander occasionally into close proximity, drawn together, really, as if by the movements of a great hand, but then inevitably drift apart again.  
  
They’re introduced—cautiously—at his father’s fief, a year after his father carefully draws him aside and shows him a large, curving sword, with a broad blade like a leaf. “This is the makhaira,” his father says, gruffly (then). He caresses the leather-wrapped hilt and an expression that Alex will later learn to read as part-hatred, part-longing, comes over his dark features.  
  
“Why lock it up?” Alex wonders. There’s no shortage of swords or weapons in Fief Tirragen; they’re expected to govern their lands, and the bandits are always a problem in the hill country. (This is before he understands who the bandits are.)  
  
“Because it was what your grandfather’s grandfather wielded,” says his father. “Back in the old days when the hills were ours and the clans recognised no king.”  
  
There are no clans now, only fiefs, all of whom are vassal to King Roald in the west.  
  
He is seven, at that time, but part of Alex recognises, almost-instinctively, that such talk borders treason, is dangerous. Such talk gets men killed. Every few years, a trusted factor of the king rides through the hill country. Once, he’s told, such men took away men and women in the hundreds and they were never heard from again. Now, these seizures are infrequent, and the factors are regarded as as much a feature of the hill country as the ochre soil, as the dry, barren lands.  
  
“Why keep it?” Alex wonders, aloud.  
  
“Because it’s part of your heritage,” his father replies, curtly, as if he’s regretting the gesture in the first place. “And for good or for bad, we can’t change what we are.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Delia of Eldorne is a slip of a thing, with brown hair and green eyes, like clear, deep ice crusted over Lake Tirragen. He’s not yet at the age where he’ll find her pretty; one day, he will look back and see, even now, the seeds of the woman the court poets have referred to as the ‘beauty of the east’.  
  
Alex doesn’t know what to make of her.  
  
He has sisters, but none of them carry themselves with the confidence or the effortless grace she does. Kal cuts her hair as short as their father will allow and runs with him and bests him at some of their children’s games; skipping stones across the surface of Lake Tirragen, foot-races, the little games that conceal the old ways, in the way of how children’s games often contain a kernel of truth—thread games teaching them to knot leather charms for luck, for health, for prosperity; for fortune at war and a safe return. She bests him until he learns to be stronger, faster, and she never does learn the makhaira.  
  
His father keeps his makhaira under lock and key and drills Alex in the way of the sword. “You’re the son of warriors,” he says, curtly, everytime Alex fumbles or drops his sword. “Act like it!” But some of the sweeping, clumsy, choppy blows, Alex notices, are ill-suited to the thinner longswords favoured by the King and his knights. Still, his father says nothing. So neither does Alex. (This is the second lesson; that which has not been spoken need not be unsaid. And so they pretend.)  
  
Into all of that comes Delia, like a breath of fresh air, stirring the dust of his life, and he stares at her—not gawking, he tells himself—as she curtseys to his father and he’s nudged so he bows to her father and then, more awkwardly, to her.  
  
“Lord Eldorne,” says Lord Tirragen. “I believe we have matters to discuss.”  
  
And so they withdraw, to the old study with the owl table—named for wisdom and valour in war; that, and the owls engraved into the legs of the table—to discuss matters Alex knows he’s too young to be privy to, for all he’s his father’s heir.  
  
And Delia smiles at him.  
  
He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He looks at her, says nothing.  
  
“I’m Delia,” she says, proudly—but not haughtily, never that. “Of Eldorne, of course.”  
  
“Alexander of Tirragen,” he murmurs. “But everyone calls me Alex.”  
  
“That’s an old name.”  
  
“I know,” he says. Which is a nicer way of saying that his name doesn’t come from the west, but deep in the past of the hill country; from a time before the dust turned ochre, before the clans were driven from their territory, before some of them turned noble and swore loyalty to the king in the west.  
  
It’s a nicer way of saying that his name is _dangerous_ , even if Delia’s isn’t. He raises his chin and says, “So what?”  
  
“So nothing,” Delia shrugs. She plays with a lock of her brown hair, twisting it about her fingers. “I like it, actually.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Two years later, he rides with his father to the court of the King. But a little before that: she’s in a dress that matches the green of her eyes; they meet at the shores of Lake Tirragen.  
  
“So,” Delia says.  
  
Alex says nothing. He picks up a handful of sand and lets it run through his fingers. Even here, even now. Red, like the dust.  
  
He raises an eyebrow.  
  
“Don’t you have anything to say?” she almost-snaps.  
  
“We’re going where we’re supposed to be,” he says. “Aren’t we?”  
  
Delia’s mouth twitches. “I’m not sure I’d say that.”  
  
In the dawn light, Alex thinks, she resembles one of the figures in the old stories his tutor tells him; a warrior-queen of the hill country, erect and proud, the blood of her foes staining the soil beneath her feet.  
  
All of that gone, now, of course.  
  
All gone.  
  
 _It’s an honour_ , his father says, firmly. But Alex can see his father’s expression, and Lord Menelaus of Tirragen looks more displeased with the ‘honour’ of serving the king than anything.  
  
The years have taught him the value of silence, of holding his tongue, of keeping his father’s secrets, and so he says nothing to Delia.  
  
Delia kicks out at the soil impatiently, dislodging pebbles into the lake. “You don’t have to pretend you like it, you know. Not with me.” Which is a fine thing to say when any hillman that knows their history knows you can’t even trust your own brother or father or son, back in the days of the Purges when King’s Factors were feared and hated in equal measure; and even now, their brief acquaintances have been drawn out over occasional visits between their family’s fiefs, and a few messily-scrawled letters.  
  
Alex just shrugs and deftly changes the topic, the way he parries a sword-thrust and ripostes—“You don’t want to go to the convent.”  
  
“Really,” Delia huffs. “It’s not like I have anywhere else _better_ to be—it’s where they put on the _polish_ , you know,” she says, and from the change in her demeanour, Alex can tell she’s imitating someone. “The convent turns out fine ladies of quality, and completes your education. Nevermind that the convent is practically in the armpit of nowhere.” Alex does have to stifle a snicker at that mental image. She glances at him, her chestnut hair falling soft and unbound on her shoulders. “You could at least tell me what you feel, since I’ve gone and told you.”  
  
Gravely, he says, “What I feel doesn’t matter. You know that.”  
  
She kicks at his shin. “It matters,” Delia says, fiercely, sharply; her pale eyes afire. “Don’t ever think it doesn’t.”   
  
But she’s just a slip of a girl, and he’s just a boy, and as the time falls away between their fingers, they part and go their separate ways. Alex is introduced as an oddity: the quiet son of Lord Menelaus of Tirragen. He recognises—because he’s clever and observant—the look of disquiet that passes the training master’s face when Duke Gareth of Naxen takes a look at his new charge.  
  
“I’ll take over from here,” the Duke finally says, which is a curt dismissal, really, but Lord Menelaus doesn’t display any offence. The man simply nods, and leaves.  
  
It is, after all, the way of things.  
  


* * *

  
  
They’re a mixed batch: there’s a dark-haired page who towers over the older pages (Alex can tell, immediately, that nobody’s going to push that boy around), a boy who looks hauntingly familiar until he sees him standing next to the training master and realises he’s the Duke’s son, a shy, blond boy whose silence instantly endears him to Alex, and a few others: including a loudmouthed page with crooked teeth.  
  
The older pages take a look at them, but Alex ends up being left to his own devices (no-one else from the hill country is here) and tall, blond Dirk of Northrun pushes him around a few times. Alex is small for his age but he takes the beatings until the first day his fingers close around the hilt of his sword (“It’s broad,” the sword master grunts, but reluctantly permits the leaf-shaped blade, if only because he won’t have enough time to forge another.) And then he moves and it’s like the sunlight dancing off the waters of Lake Tirragen, like a scarf of green silk drifting in the gentle breeze.  
  
They leave him alone after that; Aram Sklaw takes him aside and eventually, Lord Martin and Duke Gareth give him additional lessons. “An exceptional swordsman,” he hears them murmur. The other boys shoot him looks that mingle respect and jealousy; suddenly, he’s not just the dusky curiosity from the hill country, but the bright star of their group, the one they all take interest in.  
  
Before: he’s quiet in most of his classes, except mathematics, where the Mithran master loves him; where the world makes _sense_ , where everything, from catapults to castles to bricks and stone can be described in the language of mathematics—  
  
“Except,” Alex says, once, to the Master, “You can’t describe a lake, or a snowflake, or a drop of rain. You can’t describe a flower, or a cloud.”  
  
It’s a strange lacuna, and one that stirs something deep within him. How do you make sense of a world where you can describe the stars and planets but not those small, commonplace things: things like a lake, by which a boy and girl might, for the sake of argument, meet—or the movement of a green silk scarf in a breeze, or…  
  
“We’ll get there yet,” the Master says, assigning him more readings on geometry. “That’s the beauty of mathematics, lad: it doesn’t matter if we can’t find the equations, they must still exist, all the same.”  
  
It’s something that doesn’t occur to the other pages. Alex finds himself strangely troubled by it.  
  


* * *

  
  
It’s the prince himself, eventually, who draws Alex, slowly but surely into the tapestry of friendships he’s stitching. Before: the most Alex has is a few exchanges with Gareth the Younger (“Just Gary,” the page says, sliding into the desk next to Alex with a deceptive casualness. “So, I heard you chased Edgar around the fencing courts five times with a sword and had his guts for breakfast.” It’s always about the sword, Alex thinks; as if there’s no other language to be had.)  
  
He shares a few comfortable silences with the lithe blond page, who, Alex learns by proxy, is Francis of Nond. Francis, at least, feels no urge to chatter; in fact, since Alex has made it a habit to observe the behaviour of the other pages, he knows that the extraordinary thing about Francis is exactly how unobtrusive he is.  
  
He often runs into Francis at the stables, where they quietly groom and feed the horses together. Nond, Alex will later learn, is famed for the quality of its horseflesh, and that explains a part of things.   
  
But then: Prince Jonathan becomes a page, and all of a sudden, the entire world—the microcosm of Tortall that is the palace at Corus—stops and begins to wind about the young prince. He’s instantly drawn into the group of Gary and Raoul, and by extension, Francis, because Francis seems to follow Raoul around.  
  
Ralon of Malven tries to harrass the prince a few times—Alex can’t decide if he has a deathwish (isn’t that political suicide?) or if he’s just really, really, that stupid. Jonathan orders Ralon to leave him alone, and when Ralon keeps it up, Raoul steps in and beats the bully off his new friend with a sort of profound satisfaction that Alex finds quite disturbing.  
  
Ralon never does bother him, though. It’s the one benefit of being the terror of the fencing courts.  
  
Alex keeps to himself, keeps his head down, and keeps soldiering on, juggling the inexplicable gaps in Tortallan mathematics with the language of the sword.   
  
And then one day, the prince appears on the courts as Alex is practising a complicated pass and says, casually, by the way, he’s heard of Alex’s skill with the sword, and would Alex mind giving him a few hints? Those clear Conté blue eyes meet his, steady. “Aram Sklaw thinks I’m about to embarrass him before my uncle,” Jonathan adds, dryly. “I think I’d like to make sure that doesn’t happen.”  
  
He is reminded, for no reason, of Delia; of the way she carries herself, the sure knowledge that there is a universe and she stands at the centre. (And perhaps she does; perhaps that’s what the gaps in the mathematics are, describing the passage of heat, describing flowers and pretty girls and the grass by Lake Tirragen.)  
  
Alex jolts himself from his thoughts and says, gravely, “It will be my pleasure, your Highness,” because you don’t just refuse the prince like that.  
  
Jon grins, and says, “My friends call me Jon.”  
  
It’s an invitation, and once Alex takes it, his world is never quite the same again.  
  


* * *

  
  
Delia is back in his life sometime after he’s been knighted; a beautiful figure in low-cut green silk, descending from her palfrey. The other boys—knights now, really—are instantly smitten. Alex feels something in his stomach shift and give way as she smiles—seemingly at them, but he recognises it, recognises the echo of the girl smiling knowingly at him.  
  
The other girls from the convent follow, of course, but it’s clear how things are going to be as Delia flirts effortlessly with his yearmates, twining them about her finger.  
  
Gary and Raoul fight a duel over her riding gloves, Jonathan writes endless sheets of poetry about her, and Alan—Alan of Trebond, the Court’s latest darling, is immune to Delia’s charms.  
  
Alex doesn’t care. Delia, at least, leaves him out of her shenanigans, preferring to focus her efforts on Jonathan, insisting that Jonathan deploy his squire to answer all of her needs; fanning her, bringing her chilled wine and sweets… It’s almost funny, Alex thinks, if you considered exactly how much Alan clearly detests doing all that.  
  
Two nights before the duel in which he almost kills Alan, he notices his former knight-master, Duke Roger of Conté, inviting Delia for a brief dance, and then supper in his study. It’s almost laughable, thinking of what the Court gossips will make of that—even the Duke of Conté isn’t immune to the Eldorne girl’s charms!   
  
He catches the eye of Sir Myles, offers the man a sardonic salute and strides away.  
  
One night before the duel, he finds Delia in his rooms, admiring the blade of the first sword he’d ever forged, mounted on the wall. “Very traditional,” she says, with the tone of a connoisseur admiring art, rather than a weapon meant for nothing other than for killing, for war. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”  
  
He doesn’t ask her what she’s doing there. Instead, he sets down the chilled cup of cider and answers, “It was the only thing I could think about, when they said to make a sword.”  
  
She looks at him—sharply, searchingly; none of that languid sensuousness she’s been displaying to the Court for months on end, and says, testing, “You’re still here.”  
  
Alex shrugs. “Where else would I be?”  
  
He’d need to apply for leave, to return to his father’s fief; to Tirragen and the pale jewel of the lake amidst the ochre dust, the hollow land and exhausted, beaten-down people. And then there’s the Duke’s words, like a poisoned chalice of wine, like a dark promise. _“We can change things, Alexander,”_ Duke Roger says, smoothly, as if he isn’t the serpent, winding his coils about Alex’s heart, _“What do you think will happen when my young cousin ascends the throne?”  
_  
 _“I don’t know,”_ he’d answered, back then; honestly. He’s not a visionary or a revolutionary at heart; he’s preoccupied by questions of mathematics, of the place of small things in the universe, and by questions of the sword.  
  
His answer changes, after Jonathan crosses the Drell to rescue his squire and negotiates a settlement with Tusaine that requires them to forfeit all claims to the Drell. They call him (behind his back, in Court gossip) the Old King, Jasson the Conqueror come again, and Alex can see it now, and wonders how he’d been so blind to the way Jonathan answers questions in Myles’s class, his language always that of stability, consolidation; translated, they mean _power_ , they mean control.  
  
He doesn’t want to think in those terms: of power, of control. But the answer to that is Duke Roger’s voice, harsh with disappointment: “I expected better of you, Alexander. You can ignore the realities of the world. Or you can choose to acknowledge them, to work within them.”  
  
To Delia, he says none of these (it is yet too early; these have not yet come to pass), only, “It’s too cold for a border patrol. At least it’s warm and comfortable here.”  
  
Delia wrinkles her nose with distaste. “So I see.” It’s judgement, of course; he’s taking her measure, and she his, as if they were fencers, as if they’re trying to assess where they stand now, after the passage of the years.  
  
“Why are you here?” A clumsy question, but one that disrupts the long, brooding silence.  
  
Delia shrugs now, smiles wryly. “Not too many eligible husbands on the border. Not too many in the hill country, either.” She glances at him, searching, trying to see what effect her words have on him.  
  
He merely says, “So I see.” Echoes her own words, only half-consciously.  
  
They stand, on either side of his first sword, almost a makhaira, and Alex adds, “Well, then. I’ll be at the practice courts. Feel free to show yourself out when you’re done.”  
  
He turns to leave, but she catches his wrist. Stops him.  
  
Says, softly, “Are you happy?”  
  
An echo of the girl. “Are you?” Alex counters.

* * *

  
  
Delia rides up to him as he and Geoffrey pack, ready to leave for the border. “I don’t understand,” she says, quietly. Fiercely. Geoffrey, at least, has the courtesy to pretend he hasn’t overheard that exchange and tactfully rides on ahead.  
  
Blandly, Alex says, “What is there to understand?”  
  
“You tried to _kill_ him.”  
  
He catches her wrist now. “What do you think they taught me here, after all these years?” he murmurs. “Everything about my education has been about how to kill people, Delia. Why so surprised?”  
  
Except he _was_ surprised, by the helpless fury, by the dark jealousy that swelled up in him, by the desire to beat Alan bloody, by what he can only belatedly categorise as an utter, utter hatred. Except that he’s ambushed by the knowledge that he can want someone to die this badly, that he’s trained and trained; that his hands have the capacity to kill someone he’d once thought was an almost-friend.  
  
Delia tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and says, primly, coolly, “Be careful.” The rest of the patrol party rides up behind them, and he understands; understands, too, the tenor of her words.  
  
He offers her a nod of acknowledgement, spurs his horse, and rides on to join his squire.  
  


* * *

  
  
That long winter on border patrol, Alex first thinks he glimpses it: a tantalising hint of the answer. They winter at the City of the Gods, and as they celebrate Midwinter, he speaks to a young scholar—dark-haired, dusky-skinned, almost as if a twin—working on an arcane theory of heat.  
  
“It’s amazing,” the young man breathes, gesturing to the diagrams and equations on parchment, and Alex can catch a hint of hill-dust on his tongue. “Don’t you think?”  
  
Alex studies it carefully as the scholar goes on. “You can draw your sword, or sheathe your sword. Nothing changes except the position of your sword—it’s a reversible change. But the flowering of daisies, burning of a scrap of parchment…it only goes in one direction.”  
  
“You’re talking about time,” Alex says. He glances up from the parchment, at the earnest young man.  
  
The scholar shakes his head furiously. “Yes and no. Do you know of the legends of creation?”  
  
Alex blinks. He’s not the best with theology, for obvious reasons; neither his father nor page training in Corus cares much for it. “Well, right,” the scholar says, cutting in. “The lore holds that in the beginning, there was nothing but void—pure, utter, nothingness. And then the nothingness beheld itself, and gave forth the ancient powers: Father Universe and Mother Flame.”  
  
“Whatever that means,” Alex mutters.  
  
“Stay with me,” the scholar chides. “It gets interesting after this. Father Universe and Mother Flame birthed the Great Gods—Lord Mithros, the Great Mother Goddess, the Black God, and so on. And they birthed the Queen of Chaos, Uusoae, who forever wars against her siblings.” He leaned forward, intent. “And one day, it is said, Uusoae will ultimately triumph, and all will collapse into Chaos, and end.”  
  
It is a stunning thought, Alex realises: to know that even the world as they know it is impermanent, perhaps said to give way one day, to collapse into utter disorder. How, after all, do men contend with gods?  
  
“Is it theology or a story?” he wants to know.  
  
The scholar offers him a brilliant grin. “Probably the latter,” he says. “Talk of the world ending isn’t very popular in the cloisters. But think, if you will: it offers an excellent model for thinking about change, about destruction. A parchment burning to stirred ashes; order giving way to chaos. The collapse of a nation, even stirring a droplet of cordial in a flask of water—watching as it mixes, mingles, order giving way to disorder, until the end is nothing but flat, distributed, chaos.”  
  
“But what is gained by it?” Alex asks, frowning.  
  
The scholar shrugs. “Perhaps a whole new way of examining things,” he murmurs, smoothening out his crumpled sheet of parchment. “After all, how do we begin to address the gaps—the lacunae that mathematics cannot touch—unless we develop a whole new way of thinking about them?”  
  
“Daisies,” Alex mutters. “Water. Bluebells.”  
  
“Populations of deer,” the scholar replies. “A cloud…or water flowing from a river into the ocean.”  
  
In the glance Alex exchanges, he reads a kindred spirit, even if some of the mathematics the scholar employs is far beyond him.   
  


* * *

  
  
It is a slow decline into Chaos, unarrested.  
  
They go to war with Tusaine; Jonathan defies his father’s orders to cross the Drell and rescue Alan. Alex, meanwhile, is holding the bank: one night, he returns to his tent to find his former knight-master there, helping himself to wine.  
  
“Did you hear the men?” Duke Roger says, simply.   
  
He has. Some of the levies are drawn from the hill country; they’re men who grew up with the memory of the makhaira and music, they’re men who grew up with spears in their hand and hunger in their bellies, and their pinched, hollow faces brighten perceptibly when they’re regularly fed as part of the army.  
  
It’s appalling, Alex thinks, because logistics has always been a part of his life, and even now, he knows there’s only so much his father can do with Crown taxes siphoning away Tirragen wealth, without any support from the Crown to get the ailing fief back on its feet. The hill country has never been wealthy; drainage of wealth, Alex thinks, because the wealth went out and never came back, and then the dust years came and the crops suffered and they never did recover.  
  
It’s not something Sir Myles talks about except briefly, and then, his dark eyes watch Alex and the other pages from the hill country (eventually there are others) like a hawk, always suspicious.  
  
“I did,” Alex says simply, and accepts the cup of dark wine.  
  


* * *

  
  
Lord Menelaus dies the following autumn, after a long bout of illness. He receives leave (at long last) to return to Tirragen and packs his bags. Geoffrey goes with him; he offers to place Geoffrey temporarily with the palace but Geoffrey shakes his head.  
  
“I’m your squire,” Geoffrey says, laconically. “It’s my job.”  
  
It’s a long ride home, and Delia meets him at the palace stables, far away from the prying eyes of the Court.  
  
“I heard,” she says, simply. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
Alex shrugs. “It happens,” he says. Inadequate; but appropriate, perhaps, in the face of sudden death. He can’t find the words for that, and neither the language of mathematics nor the sword is sufficient.  
  
“It does,” Delia says, shrewdly. “But you’re allowed to be torn up about it.”  
  
He is, maybe. But he just feels cold, tired, empty. Like a makhaira blade too long distanced from the sheath.  
  
She touches his shoulder, briefly. She’s using a faint floral fragrance today; probably meeting Jonathan later, Alex thinks. He almost pulls away from the contact.  
  
In the end, Geoffrey is the one to break things up. “The horses are ready,” his squire reports, and then, “Oh. Should I come back later?”  
  
Alex shakes his head—as if sloughing off water, or a dream—and steps away. “We’ll leave now,” he informs his squire. To Delia, “I’ll send your regards home.”

 

* * *

  
  
Geoffrey never does ask Alex if he likes _her_ , and it’s just as well. Alex is honestly overwhelmed by the things that need doing at Tirragen and as far as he’s concerned, he’s not sure what an honest answer would be.  
  
Standing by the shores of Lake Tirragen, he remembers the boy and the girl; he remembers Delia telling him that it mattered, what he felt.  
  
He walks away from the lake, turns back to his duties to his fief and people.  
  
The years have not been kind to Fief Tirragen, and even all of Alex’s considerable logistical skill cannot work miracles. He can’t make grain erupt from overfarmed ground, for instance; nor can he make the money for Crown taxes magically materialise in corners of his almost-emptied treasury.  
  
And everywhere, everywhere in this corner of the hill country, the eyes follow him, expectant, hungry, weary, asking him what he’s going to do about it.  
  
He ends up writing a few missives to Corus, requesting an extension on Crown taxes. The one to Jonathan never does receive a reply. But a few days later—a courier arrives from Corus, his horse lathered, sides heaving.  
  
He bears a single message for Alex—Alex slits it open and reads it in the privacy of his father’s study, spreading it out on the owl table.  
  
It bears only a few lines, and the most crucial of all:  
  
 _Tax exemption_ , it reads, in the familiar, elegant writing of Duke Roger. And then: his former knight-master’s signature and seal.  
  
He’s surprised to realise his vision is blurring; to feel the trace of wetness on his cheeks.  
  
And a postscript: _Let me know if you need more help, Alexander.  
_

* * *

  
  
They return to Court, just in time for Geoffrey’s Ordeal, while Delia—dressed, for once, in an inconspicuous brown cloak, simply stands by him and holds his hand as he waits for his squire to complete the Ordeal.  
  
“Are you sure about this?” he asks, quietly. It’s many questions, rolled into one: he’s well aware of what it means, for them to be standing together, close enough, touching. You don’t marry within the hill country: it’s only been several generations since conquest, so you marry out—to loyal nobles, with generations of service to the Crown in their blood.  
  
But there’s another question, too—a kinder one. Or perhaps a crueler one. Alex isn’t sure.  
  
She scoffs at him. “Oh, please, almost no one comes to this garden. And it’s not like he’d notice,” Delia says, tartly. She tugs up the obscuring hood, anyway, before she continues. “I’m pretty sure he’s getting it on with his squire anyway.”  
  
“Oh.” There’s not much Alex can say to that, except to wince at the thought. That’s something he would never contemplate with Geoffrey, at least; neither had Duke Roger asked as much from him.  
  
“Oh indeed,” Delia replies, lips pursed. “I hadn’t expected him to fall for the charms of that lovely squire of his.”  
  
The waiting seems to go on forever. It’s not an experience Alex would wish on anyone. As the hours pass, he mingles anxiety with memories of his own Ordeal. It’s his first time experiencing things from the knight-master’s end, and he has to wonder if that’s what it felt like for Duke Roger, all those years ago.  
  
“He’ll be fine,” Delia says, softly. “How often do they kill people in there anyway?”  
  
Alex rolls his eyes. “Duke Gareth says he lost a finger in there, but I heard he lost it in battle. Says it to scare the pages. But,” he adds, a heartbeat later, “The fear is real. It’s…” he hesitates, lost for words. “I’ve never experienced anything like it. Never.”  
  
Delia raises a sceptical eyebrow. “Really,” she says, flatly.  
  
There’s no words for that either, so Alex doesn’t even try.  
  
The garden is silent, the night air cool. He should probably be in the chapel, Alex thinks, but the truth is, he can’t find a reason to pull away, to go on. He finds himself thinking about so many things as the silence envelopes them: the cup of dark wine in Duke Roger’s hands, the letter. The pinched, starving faces of his people— _his people_. The red dust of the hills—red for blood, for a war that cost them everything.  
  
He thinks of the Mithran scholar, of his assertion that order itself must unwind, sometime, must give way as skeins of a thread fray into eventual, mingled chaos; Delia is simply there, their fingers interlocked like separate pieces of a puzzle, like separate halves of an unasked question.  
  
Eventually, as light begins to fade into the garden, Alex stirs himself enough to say, “He’ll be waiting for me.”  
  
“I know,” Delia says. Lightly. She pulls away.  
  
He can’t quite bring himself to leave, but he must, and so Alex strides out of the garden, towards the chapel, to watch as Geoffrey enters the belly of the beast—to watch, as staggering, Geoffrey emerges, into the light of day, into the light of a world always dying, always slipping away into chaos.  
  
He doesn’t look back, not quite.  
  
There are not enough words.

**Author's Note:**

> My headcanon of Alex and Delia has been forever altered by Ankhiale 's very well-written The Grim Gray Hills--while I'd always recommend it, I hope that it is by no means needed to make sense of what I've written here. The title comes from the song The Girl Who Can't Break Up, The Guy Who Can't Leave by Lessang. Otherwise, this is just a really quirky piece and (I hope) not too dark. I've been more or less inspired by a Greek motif for the hill country (since Matthias and Alexander), but I'm also leavening it with a touch of the Celtic. I hope this doesn't overly-alienate readers :)


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